The new Salon – very different from the old Salon

After the presidential election in November, expect to see a lot less political coverage from liberal news and commentary site Salon.

According to several sources, Salon’s newly appointed CEO Jordan Hoffner is planning to cut down on the site’s political writing and instead direct resources toward culture, business and lifestyle writing — a plan that has some political writers at the site worried.

Story Continued Below

In staff meetings and conversations about the planned change in editorial direction, Hoffner did not provide an exact timeline for the shift in editorial strategy, which will likely make Salon more attractive to some advertisers but will mark a huge change for the site, which has been known for its unapologetically liberal politics since it launched in the mid-1990s.

One person who worked with Hoffner said it's expected the politics section will be gutted after the November election.

“There isn’t a person there who shouldn’t be concerned,” that person said.

In a June government filing, the company shed some light on Hoffner's plans, writing that the media executive planned to “develop a broader mix of provocative content in addition to the core areas of news and politics." Those topic areas, according to the filing, included business and lifestyle news. To get it done, Hoffner plans to reallocate internal resources and rely on content partnerships.

Hoffner, who took the helm in May after Salon’s board of directors ousted former CEO Cindy Jeffers, moved quickly to shift the tone of Salon's political coverage. According to sources, he discouraged staffers from writing about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the 2016 election, saying there were too many “anti-Trump” articles on the site. Hoffner has also established a partnership with Carrie Sheffield, a conservative commentator who runs the website Bold, which is described as a right-leaning news and commentary site "centered on personal responsibility and conscious capitalism." Sheffield joined Salon in mid-July as a political writer, and on Monday, Salon and Bold announced they were partnering up to produce Salon Talks, a daily Facebook Live interview series that Sheffield will host.

A spokesperson for Salon Media Group confirmed the company was "reallocating resources" in order to cover "an array of topics from a variety of viewpoints." The spokesperson also said the company has plans to hire new staffers like Sheffield to build out a "new content team" for the site.

When Hoffner arrived at Salon in May, he told staffers that he had big plans to make the struggling site profitable. That strategy, according to a June government filing, includes improving the site’s ad technology so the site can charge advertisers higher rates, as well as putting a stronger focus on video content.

But with Hoffner’s plans have come layoffs. Two video staffers — Salon’s head of video, Janet Upadhye, and assistant video editor Katie Levingston — were laid off last month, according to two people. (Asha Parker, another video staffer now at Cosmopolitan, left the company around the same time.) Matt Sussberg, the company’s vice president of sales, was laid off several weeks ago, along with Salon’s chief of communications, Lindsay Krasnoff, two people confirmed.

Those layoffs were the second round at the company this year. Before Jeffers left the company, she executed a round of layoffs that affected six employees.

A spokesperson for Salon, in response to a question about the layoffs, said the company has hired more people than it has laid off.

But at least one big hire remains to be completed. Salon editor in chief Dave Daley left the site in in early June to join the Connecticut News Project, and a new editor in chief hasn’t yet been selected.

Hoffner did not respond to emailed requests for comment. According to two people, the new CEO has tried to keep his new plans for the company relatively quiet. In staff meetings, the people said, he repeatedly expressed his displeasure that internal information has been leaked to reporters.